The Impact Of Facebook On Student Academic Performance - Essay Example

 The Impact Of Facebook On Student Academic Performance Facebook has a lot of different options in regard to communication and entertainment. It allows people to make personal profiles for themselves which include personal information which identifies them. It allows it’s users to connect with ‘friends’ added into their profiles. Users can contact each other offline to via posting on each other’s ‘timeline’, by sending inbox messages as well as online through the instant messaging chat. Users can even create networks of friends online as well as join groups on facebook which they can relate to on any common ground like interests, a movement etc. it is also possible to share files through the messages. There are a lot of other features on facebook too. A wide array of different games as well as applications can be found on it. Users can post external links on their as well as the friends profiles. They can play different interactive games, some of which may even involve interaction with other users from the site. The provision of different communication methods and entertainment keeps on expanding with time on this social networking site which than grows its user base and keeps them interested and intrigued enough to keep coming back. These features make it obviously addictive or at least highly interesting for young people, especially students. Thus, making it an integral part of their school or college lives. However, does this excessive activity on facebook have adverse effects on their academic performance? Does their activity on facebook directly affect their GPA or grades? There are different opinions regarding this. It may differ with the exact usage of each person; some activities on facebook may be more distracting than the others. Facebook has become the largest social networking site globally, with over 901 million users being active on it; those who have logged in to facebook in month of March this year. For these users facebook has become an integral routine everyday activity. (Facebook Newsroom, 2012). Facebook is extremely popular among the young student generation, with its vast popularity, it’s not very farfetched or fanciful to believe facebook activity has different adverse effects on students’ academic life too. There have been a lot of different studies regarding facebook’s role as a tool for learning. One of the studies indicated that most of the students had joined facebook due to its association with education of university level. It also found out that the main purpose of using facebook by students was to keep in sync with social life of school/college and was found to be a regular part of daily routine for majority of the students. The students in general did not agree that using facebook had any helpful effect on their academics (Madge et. al., 2009). Other studies found out that a lot of students answered facebook to be a distraction regularly when asked why were they not putting more effort in their schoolwork. Facebook was although not developed with the purpose of being a platform for learning environment it holds the potential to become. A lot of educational institutes are increasingly using the social networking for fulfilling different academic purposes. Although a study claimed that 33 percent of students held an opinion that faculty shouldn’t operate facebook account. Some of the researchers after examining the effect of facebook in institutions said that the main usage of facebook by students is only to keep in contact with other people, the amount of learning activity and academic use is hardly found among them (Madge et al., 2009). Further research showed that 17 percent of those students who were on facebook used their account to communicate amongst the students from same campus, where as 50 percent of them used it as a platform to communicate with the friends that were off campus. A percentage of 35 percent students claimed to have signed up on facebook to look at as well as post photos. Only a small percentage of 10.9 percent amongst the student body indicated using facebook for any kind of academic purposes. Facebook has the potential of being academically useful, if used for that purpose. Although, since the studies show that a very small percentage of students use it for academic activities like sharing notes or getting assistance from faculty the disadvantages become more pronounced. The disadvantages include changing priorities, procrastination, addiction etc. which eventually lead to fall in grades or potentially reducing them from what they can be. It is not just a question about how much time a student spends on facebook per day but also how much he/she ‘loses’ in a day because of the distraction caused as a result of using facebook. Another important consideration is the amount of recovery time needed after using facebook; that is the time which is not utilised for studying after using facebook, due to the emotional effects facebook has on a student. Extent of the influence facebook has on students emotion’s depends, whether the student agrees to the fact that facebook effects their feelings. A study was conducted to find out if facebook evokes the feelings of longing for leisure or free time, they were asked if they look at the photos posted by their friends while travelling or having fun. Results indicated that 88 percent of students used it to look at photos of their friends. The results of this study were very high compared to the one attempted in 2009 when this percentage of students claiming to spend time on watching photos on facebook was only 35 percent. This sudden hike might be explained as a result of the global expansion of this social networking site in recent years, especially as a medium for sharing photos with the friends. The study also indicated that 73 percent of students agree that it causes them to want to be free or evokes a longing for leisure time after looking at their friends photos. 48 percent of students believe that it approximately takes them between time period of 30 minutes and up to two hours to continue with the studies or any academic assignment after using facebook. In short there is significant amount of time which can be used effectively for academic purposes and betterment yet it used to surf facebook. On top of that it has lasting effects on the student which last even after they stop using it, this is due to facebook’s ability to evoke emotions, these feelings have ability to restrain the process of learning significantly. The students if they decide to cut back on their facebook usage would be able to utilize all that time wasted in surfing as well as basking in emotions after that for useful purposes. It may even increase their chances to aquire higher academic grades if they use that time to study. Many students believe multi tasking reduces the wastage of time spent exclusively surfing facebook. The expansion and fast rate of growth had given birth to generation of multitasking students, who are under the impression that by doing more than one task simultaneously the utilization of their time is more effective. Multi tasking is parallel processing of more than one process or a task by switching the context constantly. The result of a study showed that brain is not effective in processing two different trains of thoughts simultaneously. During multitasking the brain keeps on switching between the two different contexts or thoughts which gives the student illusion of processing both of them at the same time. When the brain makes switch from one thought to the other it preserves the state of first one where it is left of in order to get back to the same thought later. This is why the constant switching between the context of thoughts consumes more time as a result of an increasingly slow rate at which the information is now being processed. Although the conditions of dual tasking do not effect the accuracy or reduce it but they definitely reduce the time which is spent learning about a certain task. This reduces ability of the brains to be able to recover the information. In 2003 Langer noted that one thing that has effect on the way information is used is how it was initially processed. When the information is processed in mindless fashion it tends to become frozen in the way it was received originally. An example of this might be students who use their cell phone or listen to music when they are studying, the may not be able to retrieve the information effectively during an exam. Although the students are exceptionally good at multitasking nowadays and make use of the advanced technology for personal use, educational purposed and job at daily basis, yet there is still concern regarding use of some of the technology in the class which hinders the learning process. A number of researched claim that young students donot realize the full extent of using these current technological distractions like Facebook. The don’t know that they are actually sacrificing a few aspects of academics and the time they can use to study and improve their academics due to sites like facebook. Furthermore, some even believe that multitasking with social media is to be considered challenge to the human cognition. It can also be suggested that the educators should fully understand and realise the challenges associated with multitasking which lower productivity, and thus, should have talking sessions with students about uses as well as limitations that come along with the multitasking as a part of their school’s literacy programs about media and information. Another thing to be considered in what exactly does a student do on facebook. This question is a lot more foretelling about a student’s level of concentration that the time he/she spends logged in or surfing on facebook. Now that it has been established that excessive usage of facebook not only costs you the time while using it but after it too, there is need to explain the varying degrees of effect facebook has on student’s distraction. Some students use it to connect with other friends, some to view photos or chat and message other people although these activities definitely evoke emotions and cause distraction the effect of these is less that that of playing virtual games on facebook all the time. Students who are addicted to gaming on facebook tend to spend a lot more time on it than others which has strong negative effects on their time utilization, productivity and thus academic results. This is due to the addictive nature of facebook which rarely fails to attract the student into constantly checking in while during the normal days or exam periods. Work Cited Facebook Newsroom. (2012). Fact sheet - Statistics. Retrieved on 28 Feb 2012 Madge, C., Meek, J., Wellens, J., Hooley, T. (2009). Facebook, social integration and informal learning at university: ‘It is more for socializing and talking to friends about work than for actually doing work’. Learning, Media, and Technology. 34 (2), 141-155. Read More